Valhalla room, and the reverb that comes with fl studio.

 

Buy some decent hardware if u are at all able.
You will get better results imho. You can gett decent hardware at a similar/much lower price but all the processing is extenal with integradted DSP etc that lowers your CPU huge and has on board algorythins.
Even a cheap lexicon will work better than most cheap plugs but it comes down so finances and specific needs, setup etc. Good luck Depends on what u need to make your sound. Good luck

 

eventide anthology verbs seem really nice! cant wait to demo them. i cant find the time right now...

 

I've worked with a famous mixer and engineer that's worked with Mariah, Rihanna, etc. I'm big on reverbs.

Usually the lead vocal chain after eq, de-ess, gate, and compress:
1. Thicken it up a bit with a small amount of Echo Boy's Microshift or Eventide's 910 harmonizer w/ preset "thicker vocal."

2. Very short (1.2 seconds or so) with no pre-delay: Eventide stereo room, or a short vocal plate found in Waves Abby Road, or Lexicon PCM (light plate), or Altiverb's RMX 16 ambience (short). High pass, low pass, and notch. This makes the vocal sound more upfront.

3. Add a 1/16 vocal delay with Echo Boy, Waves H-Delay, or, perhaps the best, PSP42 (modeled after the lexicon)

4. About 3.2-4 seconds (depends on whether ballad or uptempo) with a 1/8 pre-delay: a really nice reverb (anything but a hall), like EMT 244/250 (found in Altiverb 7 or emulated by PSP2445), RMX16 (ambience again), or Waves True Verb . Again, EQ with high pass, low pass, and notch. This is another light one, but richer.

5. Add a 1/8 or 1/4 (taste), quieter vocal delay, preferably analog from Echo Boy. It sounds best when it's either a double or a ping-pong. EQ this one like you did the last reverb.

6. Long reverb, set predelay to 1/4 (or to taste), and find something lush (usually a long hall, a wooden room, a cavern, or a chamber), and EQ to taste. For this, I strictly use Reverberate with the 96k Bricasti M7 samples (Studio A, sunset chamber, tanglewood forest, one of the halls..) or Altiverb 7 (they have a plethora, but there are some beautiful ones like "dark chamber" (Lexicon 480), King's Pyramid, stone room, MCO5, etc.).

As for the question: Reverberate, Waves (Abby Road, True Verb - don't like H-Verb), Altiverb 7, PSP42, Eventide 2016
For delay: Echo Boy, PSP2245, and H-Delay.

 

Aether

 

After little experience, I can say that your taste in reverb changes according to the genre. I find vallhalla stuff enough for EDM (Non-Vocals)

 

I used to be a big fan of Audio Damage EOS as well as the Valhalla stuff, and still use them from time to time but lately I find myself using NI Replika for most everything these days.

I still dont have one particular go to reverb, but as far as personal favorites go:

NI Replika
Eventide Blackhole
LXP Native Reverb
Voxengo OldSkoolVerb
Maschine built-in reverbs

and from UAD:

Lexicon 224
AKG BX 20 Spring Reverb
AMS RMX16 Digital Reverb
EMT 140 Classic Plate

 

I will not list what i prefer, but list a very fast,simple and effective test to know WITCH reverb will suit your needs.

Take a multitrack with dry vocals and dry acoustic guitar. Those two are mid-oriented, where all the mix will balance...or not.
If you don't have one, you can find some on the net, for mixing practice.
Like there :
http://www.cambridge-mt.com/ms-mtk.htm

Just balance levels, pans. Nothing fancy, may be a low cut before reverb.
Put the reverb to test on the master.
Full WET only (very important, to avoid pre-delay effect and such).
Disable any integrated EQ.
And test some presets of each sort : long, short, dense, thin, hall, room...


A good reverb will give you a listenable result, with separate "space" and intelligibility whatever setting.
A lot of reverbs will give you a mushy result. That's where you know a reverb will "get in the way" or not.

If a reverb is clean on the mids, with good freq/stereo separation FULL WET, you are sure it will be even better at regular levels.
If it is not, you will fight with freqs and levels.

In fact, i will list my favs :
-Nebula for dynamic mechanical reverbs/delays (real tapes, real plates, real springs...) for "creativity"
- Valhallah : easy, affordable and very effective.
-Altiverb : for orchestral group placement, and for final Samplicity M7 and T600 "lush" (third party freeware). Effective for orchestral and "real" ambiances.

I didn't tested Eventide, but i will probably like them.

 

1-Valhalla Vintage Verb (sounds big, versatile and practical)
2-Ableton native reverb (practical and gets it done)
3-Valhalla Room (Sounds great on synths)
4-Lexicon PCM Bundle (Probably the most natural sounding verb)
5-TrueVerb (Sounds natural, great for drum ambience)

 

Waves Abbey Road Studios Reverb Plates and Eventide Stereo Room 2016.
That's it. All the reverb I could ever want/need I can get with one of those plugins.

 

Last edited: Apr 23, 2016

Altiverb, H-Reverb, Valhalla, Space Designer (Bricasti M7 Impulses)

 

UVI sparks good on cpu !

 

Blackhole, and everything else Eventide.

 

SparkVerb by UVI ( Sounds great and easy on the cpu).

 

Hey, I think the starting question is too ambiguous. He needed to state which verbs for which spatial depth, e.g.,

• front/small/short,
• mid/medium,
• large/back.

@netrag begins to speak to that.

The comment of how well the verb sounds all wet maybe relevant too, but ppl use saturation on sends to verb FX so idk how that would interact, i.e., does the cleanest sound necessarily produce the "best" results after saturation FX?
@Pipotron3000 speaks to this.

I spent some time watching a guy, (my rule is if he's chubby, he's been sitting a lot and doing the stuff for a long time) and unfortunately, different instruments/vox, or styles of music, and then sonic engineering, require different verbs.

Now, I have to think about it more.

 

H-Reverb. But I use the Lexicon PCM series a lot. I'm getting to love the Acon Verberate too.
(ITB)

 

UAD PLate 140 and nebula for pristine sound and Valhalla for common tasks

 

Another vote for UVI Sparkverb - great UI, low CPU, best method of visually cataloging presets and sounds unbelievably fantastic.

I have all the valhalla, lexicon, waves and UAD reverb and delay plugs and I've been leaning on Sparkverb and Relayer recently. Worth checking out, I have the Strymon BigSky too and I can get comparable sounds out of the SV to answer your earlier question.

 

Bitsonic CustomReverbFree
http://www.bitsonic.eu/customreverb.html


KR-REVERB FS
http://www.kresearch.com/index.php?p=KRFree


MVerb
http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?plugin=MVerb&id=913


SignalDust's Tila
http://www.signaldust.com/p-tila2.html


TAL Reverb III
https://tal-software.com/products/tal-reverb


All those reverbs are free, and each and every one will add something magical to your productions.
From the highly regarded room algorithm powering Tila, to the deeply luscious and outrageous TAL Reverb III, you have a great assortment of plugins to choose from to make your music come alive. Or at least make it stop sounding as if it was recorded inside a biscuit tin.

I own many reverbs, though not the really expensive high-end ones. I'm happy enough with my Valhallas and Audio Damage stuff (ADVerb especially), and feel like I don't need more. But these free plugins do add a bit more, something. They all do something better, quicker, more uniquer than the others.

 

Yeah this is my go-to. Sounds great on pretty much everything, very little fuss, and you don't have to worry about putting a million instances on a project. The spatial browser is a nice touch too. That and ableton's built-in convolution reverb pro... Gets the job done for me.

That said, there is absolutely a gap in quality between Altiverb and pretty much everything else I've heard. But no way in hell I buy Altiverb until I'm making a shitload of money. $700 or $900 or whatever for a reverb is obscene.